FAQ: What does the phrase "Selected citations only" in the Indexed field in LocatorPlus and the NLM Catalog mean

Question: When I look up some journals in Locatorplus I see that the indexing coverage indicates Selection citations only1 for MEDLINE and PubMed. What does this mean?

Answer:

MEDLINE/PubMed contains citations to journals that were not regularly indexed for MEDLINE. Some of these journals may not even appear to be in scope for MEDLINE. These citations were added to MEDLINE via our database collaborators as a part of our special collaborative agreements either directly or older citations may have been added to MEDLINE when we merged our specialty databases (BIOETHICSLINE, POPLINE, HSTAR, HISTLINE, and SPACELINE) into our single MEDLINE database in 2001. These database collaborators selected articles for their subject scope and their selection criteria varies. Additionally individual citations may appear in PubMed due to the NIH Public Access policy which requires authors of NIH funded research to provide author manuscripts in PubMed Central.

To identify these journals, go to the indexing information in LocatorPlus.

Search for the journal record with a Journal Title Search or a PubMed Title Abbreviation Search in LocatorPlus

Go to the Details screen

If the "In" section reads: "Selected citations only", certain articles from that journal are cited in PubMed.

To identify the collaborator partner responsible for selecting the citations, search the journal in PubMed and view the MEDLINE display for the citations. The OWN field identifies the originating organization. To identify Author manuscript citations, see the PubMed label on the Summary, Abstract, AbstractPlus and Citation displays that reads "[PubMed]".